Contrail was founded early this year by officials from Google, Cisco, Juniper and Aruba. CEO Ankur Singla served as CTO and vice president of engineering at Aruba Networks. CTO Kireeti Kompella had been CTO and Chief Architect of the Junos operating system software at Juniper. Kompella authored several Internet drafts and RFCs on MPLS, IS-IS routing, Layer 2 VPNs, OSPF and traffic engineering.

Juniper was a strategic investor in Contrail earlier this year. Contrail closed a $10 million round of funding in July, led by Khosla Ventures.

The company had been in stealth mode and expected to release its product, a distributed controller that supports both BGP and XMPP, next year.

“We recognized the inherent advantages of Contrail Systems’ architectural approach and we are excited to take this next step to acquire and combine Contrail Systems into our team,” Muglia wrote in a blog announcing the acquisition. “We anticipate closing before the end of the year.”

Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 28 years, 23 at Network World. He covers enterprise networking infrastructure, including routers and switches. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy and at jduffy@nww.com.